Croatia Arrests Six Over Zagreb Explosion

Police have detained six men for causing a minor explosion in the main square of the Croatian capital, but said their motive was not political.The capital’s police commander Goran Burusic told a press conference on Sunday that the accused “agreed in December last year that they would detonate an explosive device in Zagreb’s main square”.

The minor blast in the early hours of January 23 did not injure anyone and only caused minor damage, but sparked unease across Croatia because it followed two other small explosions in the capital on January 9 and 11 in which one man was hurt.

“The motive is definitely arrogance, the insane idea of people who do not know what to do with their lives, so they do things like that,” Burusic said.

The accused, if found guilty, could face up to five years in prison.

The explosion on the main square wasn’t connected with the two previous ones, police said.

On January 9, a blast under railway tracks damaged a goods train in the western part of Zagreb.

Two days later, there was another explosion a few hundred metres away, at the Stenjevec local bus station.

Police arrested a man who was wounded in the second blast, 54-year-old Vojislav Blazevic.

They ruled out terrorism as a motive, but the reasons behind the attacks remain unclear.